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Exercise is deservedly considered the best medicine. It can reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke, lessen your risk of colon and breast cancer, and lower your blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol. It can also improve your mood, cognitive function, and your fitness in everyday life. But what dose of this medicine do you need to improve your health and live longer?

Conventional wisdom is that more is better. However, scientists do not yet know if there is there is an upper limit to the benefits of exercise, or whether there is a point where it can conversely increase your risk of mortality. Continue Reading...

According to a recent report in The Washington Post , the average American woman now weighs as much as the average 1960’s man. The average man isn’t doing any better—having gained nearly 30 pounds since the 1960’s to an average of 195.5 pounds today.

The obesity epidemic has many pointing fingers at the Western lifestyle. A concoction of calorie packed, high fat, high sugar processed foods combined with increasingly sedentary habits, the Western lifestyle seems a sure recipe for obesity. Continue Reading...

Last month a team of doctors and scientists made the case to regulators at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to consider approving anti-aging drugs as a new pharmaceutical class. Such a designation would treat aging as disease rather than a natural process, potentially opening the door to government funding for anti-aging drug trials.

To some, such a drug may seem impossible. Yet, the physiologic basis for it exists. In fact, some candidate drugs, such as metformin, used to treat diabetes, are already being safely used for treating other conditions. Many scientists believe that designing an anti-aging medication is a matter of “when,” not “if.” Continue Reading...

Whether you are a vegetable lover or a vegetable hater, there is another—and perhaps the most powerful—reason to eat your veggies: chemicals naturally found in plant-based foods, called phytochemicals, can change your DNA.

This so called epigenetic effect of plant foods, in addition to their established antioxidant and anti-inflammatory benefit, helps explain why your mother was right when she said eating your fruits and vegetables, rather than processed foods that modify or lack these natural phytochemicals, is good for you. Continue Reading...

From the Latin gratia, meaning favor, and gratus, meaning pleasing, gratitude can be a feeling, an attitude, a virtue, or a choice. Feeling gratitude is the core of human connectedness–the give and take that supports and strengthens our relationships.

According to the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, Americans are now spending the majority, or roughly two-thirds, of the day sedentary. The damaging health effects of prolonged sitting may be the new tobacco.

That may not be surprising to anybody with a sedentary job. Long, uninterrupted hours sitting at work or commuting make it hard to make time for physical activity. Yet, the wake-up call is that in addition to leaving less time for exercise and leisure activities, prolonged sitting poses its own unique type of harm to your body. Continue Reading...

The main role of vitamin D is to keep your bones healthy, primarily by helping you absorb intestinal calcium. In recent years, however, vitamin D deficiency has gained a lot of attention for being associated with a long list of diseases ranging from heart disease and cancer to diabetes mellitus, depression, dementia, colds, multiple sclerosis, and premature death (Click for Benefits of Vitamin D video).

As a result, many physicians, including myself, have been screening for vitamin D deficiency in people who are at risk—such as those who get limited sun exposure without sunscreen, have dark skin, are older, or obese—and have been recommending vitamin D supplementation. Continue Reading...

From my experience, most people know at least one habit or behavior they would like to change in order to improve their health and wellbeing but struggle to make it happen. The challenge is moving from knowing to doing. How can you get started, gain momentum, and avoid slipping backwards?

It may be the disease of our time. Stress and stress related illnesses are on the rise—with 44% of Americans reporting an increase in psychological stress in just the past five years. The American Psychological Association warns that we are a nation on the verge of a stress-induced public health crisis.

Stress in everyday life is only partly to blame. The crisis is compounded by how we respond: overwhelmed by stress, we often view lifestyle and behavioral changes needed to mitigate stress as insurmountable. We get trapped in a vicious cycle of heightened stress, poor health choices, and spiraling physical consequences. Continue Reading...

Debilitating, exhausting, and depressing. Those are the words my patients often use when describing living with arthritis. Yet often, it is what follows in response to the pain that diminishes quality of life even more: the natural tendency to become sedentary.

This week, Jane Brody’s New York Timesarticle explains why staying active—and avoiding the sedentary trap—is the best way to stay ahead of arthritis. Decreasing physical activity often leads to a spiral of chronic health problems, such as heart disease and diabetes. It also leads to progressive weakness, which makes doing daily activities and enjoying life even harder. Continue Reading...